Urban Modes
Music and Life in New York

Photo by Shimpei Takeda

Guy Barash is a compelling composer/sound artist from Israel, who studied composition with Joan La Barbara (see my interview with Joan here). Guy is a recent graduate of NYU, and he's already making some serious contributions to the New York new music scene. I'll be playing his piece TalkBack II (for violin and computer) on Friday, and I thought it would be nice to include an interview before the show. The concert will be Friday, August 27, 10PM at The Stone.

Dufallo: Can you name some of your musical influences?

Barash: Everything I’ve ever listened to, from music to everyday sounds, influenced my music. Composers that had a huge impact on me are Gyorgy Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Edgard Varese, Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and Earl Brown. However, the rawness that I pursue in my music in fact came from people like Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground, Pixies and the Tiger Lillies, who I used to listen to a lot. Also, I was always impressed by the attitude and feel of jazz musicians like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and Wayne Shorter. I try to achieve this feel in my music.

Nevertheless, my biggest influences are extramusical. Visual art, film, dance, literature and modern philosophy have always been a well of inspiration that never runs dry. Raoul Hausmann, Marcel Duchamp, Peter Greenaway, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus and Ludwig Wittgenstein, have left a significant imprint on myself and my music.

Another very big inspiration for me is an independent study that I do on the musical properties of spoken languages. I try to extract, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, articulation and other musical features from different languages.
Obviously my composition teachers, Arik Shapira in Israel, and Joan La Barbara in New York, both have been, in very different ways, very influential on my musical development. Studying with Arik for many years in a European conservatory style, I gained a lot of facilities and discipline. Joan helped me to get rid of old fashioned conceptions, side effects of this kind of educational system. For example, once liberated from the need of absolute control over my music, it allowed me much more freedom to concentrate on developing my musical language and sound.


Dufallo: Please describe the concept of your PROTEUS piece.

Barash: The concept of PROTEUS all started when I was looking for texts to work with. I love working with text, and especially texts that have some kind of political aspect in them. Probably because I come from a very political place, Israel, it’s easier for me to connect to such texts and they inspire me. On my search for political poems, I found a book called State of the Union, a compilation of 50 political poems edited by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder, and in it a beautiful poem, Imagination, by Nick Flynn. I composed music for voice and percussion to it and decided I want to make it a larger piece. I contacted Nick, saying that I composed music to Imagination and that I want to collaborate with him on a larger scale. Surprised by my directness I imagine, Flynn was a little suspicious about my musical plans for that piece, however after explaining, very vaguely I must say, my idea, he agreed to meet up, and that’s where it all started. Soon I received from him some more texts: Proteus, from which the title is taken, that I made into a prerecorded, electronically manipulated monologue, and Seven Testimonies that I set for male voice and a rock band. That was a lot of material. Now I only needed some instrumental interludes. At the same time I started a series of compositions for solo instruments and interactive computer processing, TalkBacks. I write the TalkBacks for specific performers that inspire me. The first, for clarinet and computer, was written for Christopher Bush, and the second, for violin and computer was inspired by you Neil, although you weren’t the first one to play it because of schedule reasons. It was Irene Fitzgerald-Cherry. I decided to use the two of them, TalkBack I for Clarinet, and TalkBack II for violin for that purpose as they were written at the same time and spoken the same language. Another interlude that I wrote for PROTEUS was Synctax for voice, percussion and computer, for Erin Heisel (voice) and Kae Reed (percussion). This process of combining all those pieces into a large-scale composition made me think about alternative ways of presenting contemporary music rather than using the same traditional setting used for classical programs - playing different pieces one after the other, that I think doesn’t do good to modern music. It led me think of PROTEUS as a module where the pieces with text frame the structure and give it a sense of direction, and the instrumental pieces contributes to building the dramatic and musical tension. This structural concept was born in PROTEUS and continues to occupy me.


Dufallo: Can you describe some exciting upcoming projects?

Barash: In the meanwhile I’ve written TalkBack III for guitar and computer for Israeli guitarist Nadav Lev and today I’m working on TalkBack IV for piano and computer for pianist Carol Minor. The next one, TalkBack V, will be for trombone and computer for trombonist Sean Reed. So one project is to write a TalkBack - a piece for solo instrument and live computer processing - for every western instrument, and to complete and record the series.

Another project that I’m working on is an opera, a collaboration with author Nick Flynn and video-artist Jared Handelsman, based on Flynn’s new book to be released next year.

Other projects are to expand and develop my improv ensemble, Computer Alive, co-founded with classical guitarist, Nadav Lev, and my improv duo with jazz guitarist, Eyal Maoz.


Dufallo: What do you feel is the role of creative artists in society? How does that role inform your work?

Barash: Artists are committed to the evolution of art, whatever that means to them. Every artist brings his own contribution into this collective process. This is how it keeps on going and we still have art that is relevant today. When I approach a new piece I think what can I bring into this process that will be uniquely mine. When I write for a certain instrument or ensemble I try to think what has been written for it so far and what new thing can I bring. For instance, when I write for piano, an instrument with tremendous baggage, I try to think what is a piano today? what is a piano for me? how can I make this piano sound fresh? Technology helps me a lot on this matter.

I also feel that artists have a moral role in society. Art, in a way, is the face of society on one hand as artists reflect the spirit of their time. This relates to the first part of my answer. But on the other hand, art should be the mirror facing society and the artist some kind of "prophet at the gate". I don’t believe in “art for art’s sake”. This is the reason I use political texts in my work.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for new (younger) composers?

Barash: One should wait and think before diving into the music paper. I don’t mean wait until you feel you’re about to write a “masterpiece”. This way you won’t write at all. I mean think about all the things that make you who you are: your history, the place you were born, your language and so on, until you realize how you can translate those into music, until you discover your unique voice, the things only you can bring to music.

Another thing that helped me was interacting with artists from other fields (visual art, literature, dance, etc.) It gives you a wider perspective, a whole new terminology that you could borrow into your music. This is highly inspirational. Be open to collaborate with artists from other fields, and don’t hesitate to approach other artists even if they are already somewhat established. We are all humans.

Don’t wait for things to happen, make them happen. For example, if you’re looking for musicians to perform your music or venues to play at, don’t wait until they fall from the sky. Go and get them. It maybe takes a lot of work and patience to develop one’s career as a composer, but it is absolutely reachable and worth it.

I think a good advice is to constantly want to learn new things. Otherwise it’s boring. Just ask questions all the time and aspire to develop yourself and your music, as opposed to staying in a known and convenient place. Also don’t be afraid to share information. We’re all in the same boat.

Photo courtesy of Yves Dharamraj

Ne(x)tworks cellist Yves Dharamraj is a joy to work with. He's an outstanding, versatile musician who is also fun and easygoing. This month he is making a difference in the world by volunteering in Haiti.

Global Volunteer Network (GVN) is a Non-Government Organization (NGO) that offers volunteer service opportunities in developing communities around the world through partnerships with local, grassroots programs. As part of their presence in Haiti, Yves will be living in a tent within a secure compound at a camp in Croix-des-Bouquets (40 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince) for two weeks beginning on July 31.

I am very inspired by Yves's efforts. I hope that more of us will follow his example.

Below he answers a few questions about his trip:


Dufallo: What inspired you to volunteer? Have you done this kind of work before?

Dharamraj: The inspiration to volunteer in Haiti came from many different sources. Naturally, the quick answer is the most obvious: In January, after seeing image after image on TV of horrifying scenes of the earthquake's disastrous effects on the Haitian people, I felt the need to help out in some way like most others. I immediately made a monetary donation to UNICEF.

Somehow I felt this wasn't enough. When a dear friend of mine needed help raising funds for her own volunteer trip to Haiti (it was eye-opening to discover how expensive these personal missions can be), the opportunity to contribute more to the relief efforts presented itself. I aimed to help her help Haiti and organized a private benefit recital with the proceeds initially intended to help defray the costs of her mission.

I have done quite a bit of volunteering over the years -- Habitat for Humanity, clothing drives, soup kitchens through church youth group, clerical work at the public health department, benefit concerts, arts education and outreach -- but never have I undertaken any such endeavor overseas in a disaster zone. Needless to say, the desire to partake in this kind of mission has always been there inside me; I just simply never really "had the time" or, let's face it, the courage to go out and do it. So, as I got more involved in the process of helping out my friend, personal motivation began to grow. Watching her prepare for and listening to her talk about her impending trip (her zeal is extremely infectious!) made me realize that I, too, could perhaps go to Haiti.

I have to confess that sometimes I wake up in the morning and wonder whether I really am contributing toward making the world a better place. I love to help. I strive to help my family, friends, and even the occasional stranger when possible -- even if it means just offering a rare smile, saying hello, or complimenting someone in the elevator for the radiant green scarf they chose to wear on a particularly sunny spring day. Don't get me wrong, I do love playing the cello and see how I help people through music! I love sharing the joy of music with others and firmly believe that artistic expression enhances social spirit and morale. Yet, somehow, these acts sometimes can appear a little too indirect, and along comes the urge to want to do more and wish to make a bigger impact. I suppose volunteering will fill this burning need, so I signed up!


Dufallo: Do you know exactly what kind of work you will be involved in?

Dharamraj: I have some idea of what I will be doing while in Haiti from reading GVN's handbook as well as keeping up with the blogs and photos of past volunteers. A variety of programs have been developed on site to work with orphans, teach adults and children, remove rubble from the earthquake's damage, build transitional houses, feed families, and help administer medical attention. But, in the true spirit of volunteerism, GVN tells us to be open, willing, and ready to do anything, so I will not know for sure what I'll be doing until I get there.


Dufallo: Do you have fears or anxieties going in to this?

Dharamraj: Yes! Of course, there are always the health and security fears of going into such an environment. However, what worries me more is wondering whether I am sufficiently prepared or have the proper tools and skills to help out effectively. While I have no grand design of changing the world in two short weeks of volunteer work, I still want to do as much as possible. Also, as with any new venture that pushes you out of your comfort zone, not knowing exactly what to expect always awakens shaky nerves. I tend to have become the analytical type of person that likes to know all parameters before jumping into a situation so I can measure all possible outcomes. I think it will be therapeutic to go into a potentially chaotic environment and just go with the flow.


Dufallo: Do you see this as entirely separate from your life as a musician, or do you imagine that this experience will inform or change the way you approach communication through music?

Dharamraj: I do not believe it is possible to separate experiences within life, especially when they involve powerful emotions. Music is an expression of feelings gained through personal experiences. As artists, we allow love and heartbreak, birth and death, hope and despair, contentment and regret, scorn and pity to fuel our musical expressions. We learn to feel different emotions by pushing ourselves in new directions, doing new things, or meeting new people. We hone the nuances of specific emotions by getting to know ourselves better. I cannot predict how this trip to Haiti will affect me as a person, nor more specifically as an artist, but I fully expect it to enrich my emotional palette as well as my capability to communicate with others in some way. Who knows? Maybe I'll even pick up a few melodic riffs and intoxicating rhythms while down there!!

Photo: courtesy of Kenji Bunch

As I prepare for Journaling (part two) I have the great pleasure of interviewing one of my greatest friends and colleagues, Kenji Bunch. Kenji has been a huge inspiration to me ever since I first encountered him as an undergrad at Juilliard. We worked together as students, played in the Flux quartet for five years, and started Ne(x)tworks together (with Joan La Barbara). I have always loved his music, and admired his approach to life.

Journaling (part two) will be taking place at The Stone August 15, 8PM. The composers on the program are Kenji Bunch, Paola Prestini, Joan Jeanrenaud, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Vijay Iyer.


Dufallo: Can you name a few of your musical influences?

Bunch: I developed a serious interest in composing as a teenager, when I discovered figures like Shostakovich and Leonard Bernstein; the former for his ability to express such powerful emotion through his music, and the latter for his eloquence in communicating ideas about music, as well as his respect for and facility with different musical styles. At the same time I was voraciously tearing through the important 20th century scores and recordings back then, I was also discovering the classics of rock and pop history- the melancholic art rock of bands like Pink Floyd, the operatic energy of the heavy metal of Iron Maiden and early Metallica, and the incredible rhythmic and harmonic ingenuity of classic soul and funk of Stevie Wonder and George Clinton were a few favorites. Jazz has always captivated me, with a special fondness for the Swing era of the '40s that my dad grew up with.

Years later, encountering the music of Morton Feldman permanently altered my perspective on both listening to and creating music, the post-minimalist work of John Adams helped develop my interest in stretching harmonic possibilities over groove structures, and the discovery as a performer of American fiddling traditions from Old-Time Appalachian to "Newgrass" had a profound impact on my personal vocabulary as a composer.


Dufallo: You are well known for your ability to capture the energy and character of various kinds of American popular music in your own concert music. Many of your chamber works (pieces like String Circle and Swing Shift, for example), explore aspects of jazz, rock, and fiddle music within structures and instrumentations of "concert hall" music. What are your thoughts on this relationship between popular music and concert music?

Bunch: As a musician, I was raised in the classical tradition, and only came to explore performance in other genres in my adult life. However, as a listener, I never made distinctions between styles in terms of artistic merit. I've always felt just as moved listening to the music I studied (classical), as the music of my surroundings (rock, pop, hip-hop) and that of my parents' generation (jazz, folk, Broadway, country, etc.)

My composing has always been nothing more than an attempt to write down what I hear in my head, and to present it in a hopefully cohesive way that engages the listener on an emotional level. It just happened that a lot of what was stuck in my head was a filtered version of the popular music I encountered and enjoyed. When I first started writing, about 20 years ago, perhaps it was innovative to re-contextualize elements of vernacular music in the concert hall, but now, it's almost par for the course, and words like "crossover" have become antiquated and meaningless- and I couldn't be more thrilled about it. I think setting boundaries between styles (and performers) only serves to limit the imagination of the listener, and I think we're at a really interesting time when all of that is up for grabs.

If I've achieved any kind of distinction for incorporating these vernacular elements into my work, I hope that it would be for the tremendous respect I have for the sources I'm drawing from. Like a chef who strives to honor the ingredients in his dishes, my humble goal is to share my enjoyment of whatever source I'm referencing without screwing it up through artifice or condescending.


Dufallo: Can you describe your new piece, Until Next Time? What was your initial inspiration, and how did you develop it into a complete piece?

Bunch: Like many of my works, I started this piece with the title. I'm drawn to titles that are in some way ambiguous, or lend themselves to several different interpretations. I like the implied hopefulness of the phrase Until Next Time, in spite of the bittersweet suggestion of a farewell. This led me to create the work in the character of an old Scottish aire for solo fiddle. In terms of performance, the title is a metaphor for the short lifespan of a live performance, and how each piece of music only comes to life briefly in that moment, laying dormant until the next one. As performers, we recognize this ephemeral nature of each experience on stage, and tend to look sanguinely ahead to the next chance to play a certain work. To explore this concept, I've left the opening section of the work quite free and open to interpretation, thus ensuring very unique results with each rendering of the music. Lastly, the title is an oblique pun, from one member of Ne(x)tworks to another.


Dufallo: What, in your opinion, is the role of the creative artist in the emerging global community?

Bunch: The emergence of the global community has given the 21st century a completely unique identity, and with today's immediacy of information, as artists, we've never had such a wealth of cultural resources to draw upon for inspiration. These are exciting times, and it's our responsibility to take advantage of what technology has to offer and embrace this tremendously rich, diverse resource.

At the same time, it's more essential than ever before to remain active and relevant on a local scale. With the inundation of influence around us, we still need to look within for inspiration- we need to recognize the unique qualities of our own backgrounds and personal histories, and honor the immediate surroundings that have contributed to these backgrounds. I think this is the way to contribute to that global village- by authentically telling our own stories and representing the places we come from and the people who made us who we are as artists. While it may seem glamorous (and convenient via the internet) to develop an international presence, it's also important to connect with audiences on a local scale and recognize the value of developing an identity with a real, tangible community of musicians and listeners.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for younger composers?

Bunch: Here are a few ideas:

1. Always be in the right place at the right time.
Even if my music is never heard again and I can't write another note from this day forward, I have to say that I've been tremendously fortunate in my career. I'd be fooling myself to think that my accomplishments are do solely to my talents and abilities. Mostly, they're a result of things beyond my control, like having a catchy name and stumbling into incredible opportunities at the right moment. If I've learned anything about developing a career as a composer, I would say that while we can't predict lucky circumstances, we can prepare for them so when they arrive, we're ready. One maxim I've tried to live by is to always consider myself to be in the right place at the right time, and to embrace whatever situation I'm in as a learning experience. Composing for me means constantly learning on the job, and that takes both the confidence to take on projects you may not feel ready for, as well as the humility to recognize you always have much to learn.

2. Be yourself...
Although it sounds infinitely easier to say than to practice, we have to be true to ourselves artistically. My work is all over the map stylistically- enough so that I've left a few people scratching their heads when they think they've figured out what my music "sounds like," only to be thrown a curveball. I don't subscribe to a school of aesthetics; I simply write what I would like to hear. I think as a young composer, the sooner you can become comfortable being yourself in this way, the more believable your music will be.

3. ...while still being able to adjust.
If I've learned anything, it's that it only helps me to know when to assert my ideas, and when to back off and be open to someone else's input. Simply put, most musicians you will write for are better musicians than you are- they know more than you do about how to play their instruments, and their musical instincts have been developed over years of study and performance. Our goal is to listen to them, and help present them in the best possible way that will showcase what they can do, while creating a rewarding experience for them. Often, I end up changing notes, tempos, articulations, effects, etc. based on the superior ideas of the musicians I work with.

4. Don't stop.
Lastly, I would say the best advice is simply to never give up. One of my non-musical interests is long distance running. Right above my desk in my composing studio is a patchwork quilt of all of my race numbers from various races I've completed. They're up there for me to see as a reminder of projects I've seen through to the finish, even if I had to really struggle at times. Sometimes the races are run in torrential rain, grueling 80º heat and humidity, or once, frigid 10º winter. Still, I showed up, respected to challenge of each race, and ran to the finish. They serve as metaphors for the both the individual composing projects that come up for me over the course of a year, as well as the long-term trajectory of my career.

To use a well-worn phrase, what we do really is a marathon, not a sprint. We see flashes in the pan come and go quite often in the music world, and when their stars are rising, it wouldn't be human not to feel envious of their sudden success, and discouraged about our own seemingly slower development. It can feel like there's no point in trying so hard to accomplish something when it appears to come so easily to someone else. However, when a runner streaks by me early on in a race, he's the one who has to eventually account physically for the expectation his fast pace has placed on his body, not me. In fact, I'm not running against him at all, I'm running with him. To zoom out for a bird's eye view of the race, he and I are both part of a beautifully choreographed organism made up of tiny individual parts, every one of them unique and moving at his or her own rate. I think we each need to be patient, keep our heads down, and keep slowly chipping away at our work, regardless of the attention we attract, or lack thereof. If you do that long enough, before you know it, you've created a body of work that tells your own story, and you've worked yourself into a career.

Photo: Thomas Struth

Daniel Felsenfeld is one of the featured composers in Journaling (part two), which will take place at The Stone on August 15, 8PM. I first met him at a concert of the excellent pianist Jenny Lin, who recorded his work and my own on her CD Insomnimania (2008). I have been a big fan of his music ever since that time.

I'll be performing his intense and virtuosic solo violin piece entitled Air That Kills (2000). The title alludes to a poem by A.E. Houseman (“Into my heart an air that kills, from yon far country blows…”), and also to the pollution (air that kills!) in Los Angeles, where Danny grew up.

Danny is also currently writing a piece for ETHEL, which he discusses in the interview below.


Dufallo: Can you name some of your musical influences?

Felsenfeld: It’s always a weird thing to consider influence because I never know exactly what it means: a citation of your “sources,” or a list of music you just simply adore? There’s been a lot that has been deeply inspirational that I think I sound nothing like, so I never know if influence is a matter of what turns you on or in what category your music is to be placed. Like most composers, I started out as a lover of music, so I can say that early on of course the glittering names like Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Stravinsky (I lost track of how many times I listened to Bernstein’s recording of the Rite), Brahms, Berlioz, Chopin, Sibelius, Paganini, Mahler, Puccini, Debussy, Ravel, Wagner. I was raised in a decidedly non-musical family, so all of this kind of music was something I unearthed on my own, and each discovery felt new and wild to me. Eventually I discovered new music—and by this I mean Barber, Schoenberg, Adams, Ives, Copland, Menotti, Bernstein (Mass!), Glass, Weill—and never really cleaved to one particular style. And of course along with this, a healthy dose of all kinds of music (and it should impress nobody that I listened to this too) like David Bowie, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Aimee Mann, that kind of thing. I particularly love Michael Nyman, have for years—I have a soft spot for things British: Britten and Percy Grainger (weirdo that he was), even Bax and Delius. I remember being completely knocked sideways by John Corigliano’s First Symphony, Louis Andriessen’s De Stijl, David Lang’s Cheating, Lying, Stealing, Michael Tippett’s The Rose Lake, Christopher Rouse’s Trombone Concerto, Laurie Anderson’s O Superman, Stockhausen’s Gruppen, Babbitt’s Philomel, Rorem’s Second Piano Concerto and Poems of Love and the Rain, Peter Maxwell Davies’ Ressurection, Raymond Roussel’s Le Festine d’arrigne. But now I’m just off talking about what’s on my iPod, which is interesting only to myself (and since I love music, I’ll happily tell you all about what I like), because a musician is not just a cumulative result of all they’ve heard. Enthusiasts accumulate knowledge, develop collections, and anyone who spends the bulk of their time playing an instrument or scribbling notes is more deeply invested. Influence, for an artist, is a different matter because it has more to do with what you’ve absorbed, what aspect of the tradition you’ve taken it upon yourself to internalize so that it moves unthinkingly through your fingers while you are working, an alien mode of thinking with which you’ve chosen to align yourself.

I also am a pathological reader, especially in college and grad school. I absorbed tens of thousands of pages of not only novels and poetry but also aesthetic theory (I even considered pursuing lit crit as a kind of bisnuous forking path to music). I Loved anything about the endless play of signs and signifiers, Situationism, text-only criticism, deconstruction, modes of entry into a document, postmodernism (whatever that is) and existentialism, the “society of spectacle” because that kind of thinking seemed like one big sexy game—that joissance of the big syncretic throb between thinking and feeling. I was a sucker for the dorm room epiphany. In my head it all seemed a perfect metaphor for music, so this kind of thinking (the idea that something with a deep structure can make you not only think but feel, and that this was all to the end of the experience of the “literary orgasam” of understanding) had a profound effect on me—or at least made me chatty and probably unbearable for a few years


Dufallo: Please discuss your creative process: what kinds of ideas usually come to you first, and how do you develop them into musical compositions?

Felsenfeld: Frequently it’s a game I play with myself: can I write a piece that does this or that. Not something that nobody’s ever done before (that’s never up to the composer but rather up to the filtration of history) but something that’s new to me. I don’t favor repetition (either in thought or deed), which means I tend to write slowly. And this “that” is usually very simple, even programmatic: can I depict something in sound? Can I recapture a feeling? Can I do a variation on a piece of music I abhor and also on one that I love? Can I find good music to fit my fabulous title? Sometimes it’s a “throb,” like a single musical notion that starts life as a dull little pre-embryonic seed. For me, then, composing is a dulling and arduous process: like painting a wall with a thin-nibbed ball-point pen. Whittling, moving around, shaving off, expanding, sitting with something, thinking. Pounding the piano; staring at a screen; sharpening and re-sharpening a pencil and thinking I’m working; recopying. I’d like to make it seem effortless here, but that would be a lie. Composers are not necessarily people with the best ideas, because I believe that everyone with at least a shadow of an ear comes up with musical notions on an almost hourly basis—or they have “ideas” for pieces much like people have “ideas” for screenplays, television series, or whatever strikes them; composers, to me, are the people who can get in their chair and work them out.

I compose music (rather than write fiction or work in theatre) because it is the only way I can think of to take a single moment and splay it out into a wrenching stretch of time. When I was younger, and I first heard that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was “fate knocking,” I wondered, then, if that was the opening tattoo, what happened next. Now I suspect that if that was Beethoven’s intention (and I’m not sure it was) that the whole symphony is descriptive of that single moment. At least I like to think that, and I like to write that way. Humans are vast creatures, and moments are never just that, but are more often freighted with much much more. Enter music. That’s the kind of ineffable for which I signed up, and that’s why I spend so much time doing it.


Dufallo: Please tell us a little about the piece you are composing for ETHEL.

Felsenfeld: I am very fortunate to be writing my first string quartet for ETHEL, because it’s like writing your first symphony for the New York Philharmonic or your first opera for The Met. And what’s more, I’m writing a piece of straight-up music—no author, no rights to set a text, etc. Just me, pitches and rhythms, which is, at the moment (due to the other more collaborative projects I’m working on) novel, refreshing.

The piece is called You. Have. No. Idea. It is a pretty standard four-movement string quartet (which is new to me if not to the world) with the caveat that it can be divided into four separate movements (called “You”, “Have”, “No” and “Idea”) or played as a whole. I don’t even think shuffling them around would be a problem—even though they are intertwined musically, it’s not a set of expanding variations or anything like that. This makes it a kind of a musical “open scene.” I remember from High School acting class where we got these banal scenelets to perform (with dialogue like “Hello” “How are you?” “Fine” “That’s Good.”) that our teacher would freight with the appropriate emotion, guiding our subtext. So to me this is a work of shifting meaning, depending honestly on how you arrange the movements. But as a whole I think the sentiment of the title is powerful--there’s of course a bunch of coded and hidden personal meanings for me, like there are in many pieces of mine, but that’s nothing one need know to hear it. Other than that, I just liked the idea of a piece called “You” and another piece called “Idea” because these are little words with vast implications.

Besides, I always wanted to write a piece called, simply, No


Dufallo: What do you see as the role of the creative artists in our emerging global community?

Felsenfeld: I’ve always thought that in the days of the cave monkeys, there were some who went out and hunted, some who stayed home and organized, some who created better tools with which to do these things and some who just stayed home and painted pretty pictures. Now it would be pretty easy to diminish this: the cave may have looked great, but if there was no food and nobody to look after things, things might get a little ugly. So I think this explains our role: we have to keep making the cave nice, because a nice cave, though not as immediately important as certain other duties, rounds out a set of creatures into not just a tribe but a culture. I’ve always been convinced that art—from best to worst—doesn’t affect the at-large world, but I also think it shapes the way of thinking of those who do. Which can make it seem non-essential; which is why when the going gets tough, education-wise it tends to be the first thing lost, which is the most dangerous thing that can happen to US as a culture (rather than as a miasma of disparate souls sans common aims) as far as I am concerned.

If you were to remove from the collective consciousness of The Great Western Tradition one piece, even an important piece like The Rite of Spring—not just from the repertoire but from the collective memory, erase all trace of it—I suspect the world would be exactly the same, but remove the accumulation of work in and around that time that was shaking the aesthetic mountains, and I think you could safely say the world would not be the same. This means that The Rite matters, quite a lot, even if its effect remains 1) indirect and 2) totally untraceable. Ideas waft up (or drift down, if you like) to everyone: they define, they explain, they allow us and people like us to unpack. They of course don’t help the starving or give people jobs—not in the most immediate sense—so I think it is unwise for any artist to assume they’re doing a great social turn for mankind with their specific work regardless of how much (or little) it addresses the problems of the day. But mankind is a lot of “kinds” and all are necessary. And the world has always needed the unwanted legislators, now more than ever, and as their roles diminish and they shake fewer mountains, in a way we need them more (and more of them) than ever. Screaming into a void is a longstanding and very effective tradition.

As to our role in the culture, I wish ours was greater—but then I long for the not so distant days in America when there was such thing as a public intellectual. I’m sure this lament is cross-discipline, and I don’t want to join the chorus of wailing, eschatological Cassandras, speaking of a decline in intelligence etc. But I do wish we were more represented and stood for more than our choice of topics. For example, while I would like to hear what musicians have to say on matters musical, I also wish we had purchase on other matters—most of the great composers I know are extremely erudite, sophisticated, and never get to talk about much beyond their own work. I’ve got the same strong opinions on everything from books to food, politics to film, and because music is so at-root “technical”— unlike writing or cinema, it doesn’t traffic directly in ideas: you can ask Salman Rushdie about Islam or Michael Haneke about the rise of German fascism; you can ask Jonathan Lethem about pop music and its effect on race relations, or John Ashbery about modern art; you can ask Toni Morrison about Civil Rights or Oliver Stone about the impact of the Vietnam war—of course, I’m using the coarsest examples I can think of here—but it becomes difficult to think of composers to whom you can pose similarly relevant questions, not directly at any rate, and I wish this were not true). But perhaps this is our fault, perhaps some of us stray from the notion of the towering intellectual because in this culture nobody likes—or gets—an intellectual, not unless they come replete with a vast and supposedly ironic canvas of popcultural references, so composers stick to the margins, being more creatures of raw and untutored feeling than of vast and sprawling study, and I think this can be a pose: it takes a certain kind of searching mind to write music, and I wish these brains were more prominently displayed. But I suppose we take the limited exposure we can get, right?


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for younger composers?

Felsenfeld: You just have to compose. Always. Technical mechanisms will follow; more is learned out of problems that arise when you are working. Write some bad music, a lot of it; write better music later. Read books, look at art, go to the cinema, have conversations with people who are not musicians: what we do is important and often misunderstood, but is also part of a latticework of ideas. Tune out the din of the trappings of career as much as humanly possible because it can drive you mad. Try to stay out of discussions of fashion and marketing masquerading as grand statements. Listen. Listen. Listen. Get to know not just the current moment in our profession but also the impossible-to-inherit unconscionable depth of the tradition. Study. Write pieces “in the style of” just to have the sense of a great composer moving out of your own pencil. Live in your own time, even if you don’t find much good there.

Be nice to and about your colleagues. Ask a lot of questions, especially from performers (you can learn more from a violinist than from any university). Work as much as you can, but try not to only work. Help other composers. Promote yourself in a way that you feel only slightly uncomfortable doing. Join ASCAP or BMI and take advantage—those organizations are there to help you. Try your damndest to write only the best music: don’t worry about which side of an historical thread or an aesthetic debate you land on, try hard not to overthink your “place in it all,” just make the best work you can. If you make something that’s not as good as you like, be forgiving. If someone else writes a bad piece, be even more forgiving. Make friends with people who can help you, but not only because they can help you. And above all, know it’ll be hard no matter how successful you are because there’s always a huge threatening pile of things you don’t know, and there’s always achievements that seem far beyond the horizon, no matter who you are. And stay young for as long as you can!

Also posted on ETHEL's Blog

I have been a huge fan of Juana Molina ever since I first heard her on WNYC's Radiolab Podcast in May 2009. I was drawn to her beautiful melodies, compelling rhythms, and endearing musical quirkiness.

One thing leads to another, and I now find myself performing with her this summer as part of ETHEL FAIR: The Songwriters -- an exciting evening of musical collaborations that will kick of this year's Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on July 28 at 7:30.

I'll be arranging a couple of her songs specifically for this event, so I sent her a few questions just to get to know her a little. We'll be working together (mostly by Skype) over the next few weeks.

Dufallo: Can you name some of your musical influences?

Molina: As a young girl I was particularly attracted to drones. The first one I remember was in the elevator at my grand mum's. When she sent me to get something at the market I always, always, always hoped there was no one in the elevator -- so i could travel those nine floors on my own, singing along with the note the old noisy elevator made. When it stopped, the noise was gone, and I would awaken from the trance. I had never realized this fact until people started to ask me about my influences!

Then, I guess, all the music my parents used to listen to must have somehow gotten absorbed by some kind of osmosis. Musicians like Joao Gilberto, Sergio Mendes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Maurice Ravel, Franz Schubert, the Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, Eduardo Mateo, Maria Elena Walsh, among hundreds of others that were in the air every day.


Dufallo: What is your creative process - what comes to you first, and how do you develop the initial ideas into songs? Or each song a completely unique process?

Molina: In general I start messing around with the guitar or keyboard until something (a form, a sequence of chords, a sound) catches me completely and hypnotizes me. Then I play that for hours and hours. Suddenly I realize I am going to lose what I just caught if I don't record it immediately, so I start the recording process... but sometimes, when I have finished getting ready, the idea is long gone. Other times I get luckier (i.e. I am already plugged and ready to go) and record that for a few minutes, (I'd say way more than a few...) when I realize I've been playing that for ages, I improvise an ending and stop recording. Then I listen to it and play or sing something else and so on. At the end, once the structure is ready, all the sounds in their place and the melody where it needs to go, I write lyrics to fit the melody (melody always rules).

The whole process involves many many listening sessions, and each time I work on pans, EQs, volumes, and -- most importanty -- deletes!!! If the song manages to survive and I can still bear it after a few weeks, then it probably will go on the next record.


Dufallo: Can you talk a little about the songs we'll be performing together -- El Pastor Mentiroso and ¿Quién?

Molina: The first line of El Pastor Mentiroso came along with the melody "sigue llegando la gente sola" ("there are still people coming in alone" - more or less) so I started thinking: who are these people, where are they going, why are they on their own? Then I decided that they were going to a church. A kind of evangelic church where desperate people go -- people trying to find an answer, to solve their problems by listening to a "priest" that, in the end, only asks the faithful to give him money (saying it's for God).

¿Quién? has two parts. The first one was written in 1998, while thinking about a week long trip I had made two years earlier. I had left my daughter with her dad and when I came back I saw in her eyes that I should have never left ("please mum, never go away again," says the chorus). I've played this song for a long time and I've never gotten tired of it. While rehearsing at home, I added a second part that I only played live, so when I recorded my recent album Un Dia, I decided to add it there and called it ¿Quién? (suite).


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young musicians?

Molina: To experiment as much as they can with what they think (them and not the others) is good!

Photo by Jean LeRoy

John King is a composer of many beautiful and fascinating string quartets. A violist himself, John has a deep understanding of the string sound and a particularly keen feel for extended techniques. He is also very successful at incorporating improvisation and indeterminacy into his string music in a totally organic way.

This past October I recorded John's new music for string quartet on a CD entitled 10 Mysteries (also the title of one of the compositions). John plays viola on that disc, and the other performers are Mark Feldman (violin) and Alex Waterman (cello).

This coming Saturday we'll be performing 10 Mysteries at Roulette, as the official CD release performance. Mark can't be at the performance, but we're lucky enough to be joined by violinist Christopher Otto from the JACK Quartet.

Here John discusses 10 Mysteries and some other topics:


Dufallo: Can you name some of your musical influences?

King: Muddy Waters, J. S. Bach, Jimi Hendrix, W. A. Mozart, Little Walter, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eric Clapton, Erik Satie, John Cage, Radiohead, I. Xenakis, Perotin, Anonymous IV, Buddy Guy, and again Jimi Hendrix...and probably again W. A. Mozart......(mostly his "singspielen")


Dufallo: Describe your creative process for 10 Mysteries. What ideas/concepts came to you first, and how did they develop?

King: I started with the idea of nothing, and built from there......no sound, no rhythm, no timbre, no pitch, , no amplitude, no duration.....then I heard my heartbeat, and then heard my blood flow, and then I was reading Hermes Trismegistus, and then I was reading Thomas Aquinas, and then I was reading Arabic and Egyptian alchemists and following their trajectories into western (Jungian) thought and analysis, then I said, "perhaps we'll begin with tremolos and build from there", and I guess that's what I did. My main idea was to have the players be independent and occasionally coalesce, and then veer off on individual trajectories.....then again, come together, etc......the idea of "bar-line" is almost completely absent from this work......


Dufallo: 10 Mysteries - why only nine movements?

King: I felt very strongly that the 9 mvt.'s were leading TOWARDS something, and that the SOMETHING was the silence created by the previous music's ending/stopping.....that things "led up to" the precipice/chasm of something that had no compositional correspondence in anything other than the players stopping and waiting for, or somehow joining with, the audience in wonder......


Dufallo: Can you discuss some of your other upcoming projects?

King: I will be working on a new "opera", a work of light, video, sound, voices, set and costume (or lack thereof) based on the text fragments of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (some remark of her poetry that the fragments pose a "problem" of interpretation and understanding, i feel that these fragments open a grand and potential vista INSIDE her words).


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young composers?

King: Do Everything....someone asks for a piece for "x, y and z" then DO IT!!! you are an instrumentalist and are asked to be on a gig, DO IT!!! all opportunities are to be experienced, appreciated, learned from (potentially learned to be avoided), used as springboards for the next step/composition/improvisation/encounter......just DO IT, without conditions, without prejudice, without reservation.....with extreme confidence and energy.

Photo by Paula Court

I first worked with Joan La Barbara in 2001 during the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall's three year festival of New York School composers entitled "When Morty met John." At the time I was a member of the Flux Quartet and Joan, as curator of that festival, had invited us to perform. During our first rehearsal of Earle Brown's Folio and Four Systems, I realized I had never encountered a musician like this - I was struck by her totally original sound world, and her meticulous approach to graphic scores. A year later I asked her if she might be interested in starting up a "composing performer's collaborative," and that is (basically) how Ne(x)tworks began. Since that time we have worked closely, both on her music and the music of other composers.

Joan is a constant innovator in both vocal music and multi-media art. She continues to be a major source of inspiration to me, as a performer, composer, and musical thinker. This coming Thursday, April 29, Ne(x)tworks is thrilled to present excerpts of her opera-in-progress "Angels, Demons, and Other Muses" at Roulette as part of the Interpretations series.


Dufallo: Can you name some of your biggest musical influences?

La Barbara: My major musical influence is John Cage, of course for his philosophy that all sound can be considered music, but more importantly, for his attitude toward simultaneities. I find that whenever I feel "stuck" while working on a piece, I think of Cage's interest in layering several of his compositions in simultaneous performance. When I do this with individual sound modules or elements (the building blocks with which I compose), I always find something surprising and often useful in the new relationships of the materials I am layering. Cage also said that he always tried to say "yes" when asked to do something because he enjoyed the surprise of what might occur.

Morton Feldman was also a major influence in his attention to visual art and aspects of color, shape, organization, the picture plane, negative space and equality of elements. I find that my work is often influenced by visual art. I tend to "see" sound when I hear it and when I sing and so many of my scores include graphic representations of sound as well as of the energy required to make sounds, and the physical delivery of sounds.

I found Earle Brown's technique of choosing sonic elements or modules and then reordering and reconfiguring them during performance fascinating and very useful. I often will go back into some of the sonic atmospheres I have created and restructure them to create a new relationship between the elements.


Dufallo: Describe your creative process. What usually comes to you first (a motive, a concept, an emotion, a rhythm, etc.), and how do you develop that idea into a composition?

La Barbara: My compositional process often begins with stream-of-consciousness writing, generating a list or series of words and phrases about a selected topic or theme without editing or censoring the words or ideas. I then read through what I have written, finding the music that these words inspire in me, generating sketches and constructing the musical material and overall form of the work, setting my impressions of images, translating from words to sound in much the same manner that I have generated multi-layered ‘sound paintings’ inspired by visual art.


Dufallo: Please describe the concepts behind "Angels, Demons, and Other Muses." How do you bring these concepts to light sonically?

La Barbara: In the development of this opera, I began with inspiration drawn from the troubled life and brilliant work of Virginia Woolf, her exquisite word turnings and her psychological exploration of characters, viewing them from different vantage points. Recently I have also turned to the fragments of dreams from Joseph Cornell's journals, drawing inspiration from the images and ideas expressed in just a few words, which I find very rich and intense, often magical. I also returned to a writer whose work I explored as a child, Edgar Allen Poe, as I find that the macabre fixations, his inability to accept death as finite, the labyrinthian fantasies he allowed to inhabit his mental musings are as fascinating now as when I first encountered them. Ultimately, the opera is about the struggle each artist encounters in trying to bring what is clear and perfect in the mind to fruition in a state that can be experienced by others. It is an abstract work, externalizing the internal dialogue, and the genesis of the act of producing a work of art. In performance, I draw on the expertise and vast talents of the musicians of Ne(x)tworks for whom this work is crafted. I am attempting to integrate some of my signature extended vocal techniques into the score and transfer these sounds to other instruments. For the Interpretations performance at Roulette/Location One, the Ne(x)tworks musicians will be seated within the audience in a concept I am calling "immersion". Thus, the entire space will be the ‘stage’, and the musicians will from time to time deliver "personal performances" directly to a member of the audience seated in close proximity. I have long thought it would be fascinating to sit as an audience member in the midst of an orchestra, and experience the sound in such an all-encompassing way, not as a musician, but as a listener, completely surrounded by sound as it is being generated. In this performance, I am also integrating spatial movement between the live acoustic instruments with those in the sonic atmosphere, the soundscape environment which will surround and flow over the audience.


Dufallo: What's next for you, creatively?

La Barbara: I would like to do more work in theatre and to that end have begun studying the craft of acting for the stage.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young composers today?

La Barbara: Find your individual voice, find what fascinates you and follow that wherever it takes you.

Click here to read Steve Smith's review of the performance.

Peformer's Statement

Morton Feldman's Second String Quartet

"Isn't it six hours long?"

When Kenji and I first performed Feldman's Second String Quartet (at the 1999 premiere), this was the question we heard most. Everyone seemed understandably fascinated by the idea of a six hour string quartet. The focus at the time seemed to be on how we were going to play for six hours without stopping. As we immersed ourselves in the music, however, this began to change: we found that duration is by no means the most interesting aspect of this work. The "athleticism" of it became more of a secondary concern to us. In this work Duration acts as a canvas, on which Feldman paints a stunningly beautiful encomium to the eternal marriage of sound and time. The piece must exist on a large scale in order to portray this relationship.

How can one describe listening to this monumental work? The music unfolds slowly and patiently; motives disappear for hours, then return slightly transformed, like distant memories. At times the listener may bask in seemingly endless moments of sensuality; at other times the music is cold and strange, or quietly hypnotic... the experience is highly personal; deeply human. The first time I performed it, I felt as if I had somehow lived a lifetime.

Ne(x)tworks is thrilled to present Feldman's masterful Second String Quartet to Issue Project Room as our artistic endorsement of their fabulous new concert venue. The musical community of New York City has been eagerly awaiting the opening of this performance space -- congratulations to all who have made this possible!

In music,

Cornelius Dufallo
Director of Ne(x)tworks

As a member of ETHEL I have been working with Jacob TV for a few years now, and I continue to be blown away by the originality and visceral energy of his music.

This coming Thursday I have the great pleasure of performing an entire program of music by Jacob TV as part of WNYC's New Sounds Live series at Merkin Concert Hall in NYC.

Jacob was nice enough to answer a few questions on his way over from Holland:

Dufallo: Can you name some of your musical influences?

TV: Blues, blues, Beethoven, Bartok, Muddy Waters, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, and then some more blues.


Dufallo: Many of your pieces involve pre-recorded text/voices. Can you discuss your creative process?
Do you choose texts because of their inherent musicality? How do you find the music in the words?

TV: I listen to the sounds of this world like a photographer watches its shapes and colors. When I find a sound byte that is touching, I get inspired by it, and analyze its melody and rhythm, listen to its color, and add my music to it, using my computer as a scratch book. These grooves come into being through an intuitive trial & error process, and are literally composed together to build a piece of music.


Dufallo: You have been described as a "musical terrorist." What is your response to this?

TV: I know that my music can be controversial, it's just the way it is... but to be honest: I was shocked by it. I write music to move people, to make them laugh or cry, not to threaten them. I am using esthetics which combine beauty and decay in such a way that it may confuse people. I had written CITIES CHANGE THE SONGS OF BIRDS, a triptic for harp and boombox, using the voices of drug addicted homeless women. It was very touching in my opinion, but some people said I brought the heavenly harp that David played in the old testament to the gutter. But is that musical terrorism?


Dufallo: How might you describe the role of the creative artist in our emerging global community?

TV: They are the griots of our time. Creative artists can make the world a better place.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young composers?

TV: Nobody is out there waiting for you, but people are always longing for good music, so
listen to tour spinning world, speak with your heart and follow your nose,
and don't forget your most important tool is silence, which is where it all comes from and goes back to.